Sustaining the Vision in Brant County Board of Education in Ontario, Canada.

Hughes, Sandra

The Ontario Ministry of Education directive, Partners in Education, describes the purpose and the process for integrating the library resource center program with the school curriculum. It also provides implementation direction in the form of role descriptions for the teacher, teacher-librarian, principal, and board/system support staff. In this paper, a Coordinator of Media Services for the Brant County Board of Education discusses the development of a series of 11 documents designed to assist in achieving full implementation and continuance of the Partners in Action vision. "The Partners in Action...Growth Profile" defined the stages of development from entry to refined levels for the teacher and the teacher-librarian and defined the refined level for the principal. The involvement of senior administration, support staff, teachers, teacher-librarians, and principals in the collaborative process of initiation, development, validation, pilot testing, workshopping and facilitating the implementation of the documents went a long way to integrating the vision within the system thinking and action. The second factor in building commitment to the vision was the integration of the implementation initiative with the system curriculum approach and other system initiatives. The third key to the effective implementation was a planned approach that was flexible enough to take advantage of opportunities. A study was conducted with 10 elementary schools to review the effectiveness of the Growth Profile. (AEF)